We Need To Talk About Kevin
A great weakness of mine in fiction is killer kids. Whether this is due to my overall interest in the darker side of humanity or my general dislike of children is hard to say and so when I came across Lionel Shriver’s novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin” I thought I knew what I was in for. I read it expecting the standard story of cute cherub child is really a cold blooded killer and no one save the mother seems to notice this, similar to the William March novel “Bad Seed” or the film “Joshua”, and on the surface at least this is what I got.
In the book Kevin presents himself as no one memorable or notciable to his teachers, to his father he presents himself as the all american boy, aping, from shows like “Happy Days” what is expected from him, even going so far as to things like “Golly” and “gee whiz”, but only his mother sees the emptiness and rage inside of him and he knows it.
From the moment of his birth the two of them have been at war, from his refusing to feed from Mother’s Milk to wearing nappies until the age of six out of spite, and yet, even though it is father who dotes on him endlessly and believes his every word, I believe that it is his mother, Eva who Kevin loves at least in so much as Kevin is capable of love.
Unlike the father, Eva sees through Kevin’s mask of innocence and well crafted lies, she sees the sort of petty cruelties he is capable of to his family and others, from wrecking his mother’s study that she painstakingly papered in maps from her various travels to convincing a class mate to scratch her eczema until she was covered in blood. Husband Franklin dismisses these as usual childhood mischief, claiming Kevin doesn’t know what he is doing when indeed Kevin knows all to well.
Time passes by and Kevin’s capacity for cruelty increases, he may have been responsible for an incident costing his young, ever trusting sister Celia to lose an eye, and perhaps orchestrating molestation accusations against a teacher in hopes of getting her fired just for the hell of it, culminating in Thursday, the day Kevin takes his crossbow to school and kills 9 carefully selected classmates and staff members.
One key way that this story differs from the rest however is that it is hard in some ways not to feel sorry for Kevin. Oh he shows no remorse and I for one am certain that if he could go back he would commit this atrocity all over again but his inner self seems so devoid of meaning, of feeling, colour, interest that, if not forgive him, one feels at least moved to pity him.
In some ways it seems that the whole point of Thursday was to give his life, as he puts it at one point, plot.
Eva, his mother too is not an entirely sympathetic character, she openly admits to never liking her son even when in utero and whether Kevin’s malice stems from this or whether this dislike stems from Kevin’s malice is a chicken or the egg type arguement in that it is hard to know which came first.
These two characters give themselves symmetry however for as I said, if Eva is not entirely sympathetic, then Kevin is not entirely unsympathetic.
Although Kevin hismelf would decry any such lesson to be learned from his school shooting, each aspect of which carefully planned to avoid such banality, using a crossbow mens it cannot be blamed on lax gun control, he wanted for nothing as his father doted on him an even if she did not feel comfortable with him Eva at least gave him attention and anything he might have been inclined to ask for without spoiling him, his family was well to do, his parents marriage, although strained was intact, this all serves to make clear that such atrocities are capable of being commited by ANYONE and to ANYONE.
The book is well written, the characters complex, the plot engaging.
9/10
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